Navigating the Arctic Circle with Starlink and OneWeb LEO Satellites

The exploitation of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite signals of opportunity from the Starlink and OneWeb constellations for maritime navigation in the Arctic Circle is investigated. First, the current geopolitical importance of the Arctic Circle is discussed. Second, the received signal from LEO constellations is modeled, and a software-defined receiver is implemented to extract Doppler frequency measurements from overhead LEO satellites. Third, an extended Kalman filter (EKF) is designed to fuse Starlink and OneWeb Doppler measurements with altimeter data, assuming a velocity random walk dynamics for the ship. Experimental results are presented of the Adventure Canada ship navigating along the west coast of Greenland over a trajectory of 8.17 km traversed in 20 minutes, where the altimeter-only two-dimensional (2D) position root-mean squared error (RMSE) was 629 m and the final error was 1,081 m. However, fusing altimeter data with Doppler measurements from 12 Starlink and 9 OneWeb satellites dramatically reduced the 2D position RMSE to 119 m and the final error to 27 m.